Fitness Friday {10.21.2016}

This week I failed with exercise. The only thing I managed to do was go to my dance classes. I did, however, stick to my diet very well. Because of that, I am down 2.4 pounds this week!! I'm almost back down to where I was when I started Eat to Perform (May 2015) and am down 12 pounds since leaving ETP (March 2016). I wish I hadn't wasted my time on that big fail!! 

My dance teacher is working on a workout plan for me...yay because she knows more about that than I do!! Once I get that I will add that to my plan. This weekend though, we are going camping with Sean's cub scout pack. I will do my best with eating but my choices will be more limited and I will not turn down s'mores!! On the other hand, I will be more active so maybe it will even out. We'll see how it goes next Friday! Hopefully I will have more to share then!

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Fitness Friday {10.14.2016}

Baby Sam doing his ab workout:

Isn't Sam a cutie!? Leg lifts and crunches are his new favorite thing to do. I wish I had his determination.

My fitness journey has been a rollercoaster. ...a rollercoaster that I am so ready to get off of. However, I still have another 15-25 pounds I'd like to lose, I've been trying through trial and error (lots of error it seems) to figure out what works. Unfortunately, diet wise, low carb seems to work the best for me. It sucks, It really does. Carbs are so tasty but I need to do what works, right? That's what I did this past week and today's weigh in revealed 1.6 pounds lost!! Yay!!

The other part of this equation is working out. I actually have not lifted weights in a few weeks. Mostly b/c I'm having a hard time with motivation to get my butt to the gym in the time I have with our crazy schedule. But also because I'm not sure what I should be doing....bodyweight, light weights, or heavy weights....low reps or high reps...mostly weight lifting or mostly cardio...etc. What I have been doing is practicing yoga regularly and doing more cardio (running and walking)....and of course 2 dance classes a week.

This week's plan:
-Continue with the low carb (with a cheat meal once a week)
-Do something active each day: dance class, run, walk, and/or yoga
-Figure out a workout plan

Lastly, check in again here next Friday. See you then!

Please comment below! I'd love to hear from you! 

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No More Excuses

One week ago I decided to quit making excuses about exercising. Time was my biggest excuse so getting up early to exercise made sense...just hard to do. I decided that I would start first thing the next morning b/c there was no reason not to. So, I set my alarm and set out my clothes, shoes, phone/headphones, and dog leash....might as well walk the dog at the same time, right? I had no problem getting up the next morning; I was pumped. I walked about 1.5 miles in about 30 minutes. I felt great!! I had a few hiccups the rest of the week: being sore, baby toddler wanting to nurse when alarm went off, being tired, warm bed seeming better than the chilly outside... but I did it anyways. My excuses didn't seem to be as big once I got outside and once it was all done, I felt amazing! The biggest obstacle was getting up and out the door. As I mentioned earlier, I was also bringing the dog, our pug, Gizmo. She's a crazy dog that has way too much energy. Another bonus is she's starting to be a little calmer and behave a little better! She gets so excited when she sees the leash.

I've been using an app called RunKeeper to track my walks...maybe one day I will actually run. RunKeeper is pretty neat. It uses GPS to map my walk and keeps track of my time. It then calculates my pace and how many calories I burned. I have it let me know when every 10 minutes passes. That helps me keep my pace up. Once I'm done it reads my stats to me and I share it on Facebook. There I've received lots of likes and comments and that has helped motivate me. If you're one that's liked my posts or commented on them, thank you and please keep clicking that "like" button! I'm motivated right now but I know my own motivation will eventually start fading.

But for now, I feel energized, happy, proud, and just all around great...and that is quite motivating!

Check out my stats for this week!

I know I haven't blogged in forever. I guess I need to make a no more excuse promise on that too. I'll work on getting a few update post up soon!

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Fitness Goals Revisited

Back in February I wrote about my fitness goals. I was happy with the numbers on the scale then. They really weren't bad for just having my third baby! My goal was to get healthier and fitter just by eating good and exercising. It went well...for a week or two. The exercising was a huge fail. It just stopped happening. I felt I was eating ok when in reality, I wasn't. I would forget about the little bite here, or finishing the last little bit of the kids' sandwiches so they wouldn't go to waste, etc. It all added up and the number on the scale started to go up! I had to come up with a better plan. After talking to hubby, we decided to sign up for Weight Watchers. I had done WW before and knew it was easy to follow and it worked. We did our initial weigh in on July 7th. I weighed in at 156.2; about a pound heavier than I was the day before Emily was born. Not good! We signed up under a promotional offer and paid for 3 months. Maybe the money will make us stick with it! So far so good. We've had 4 weigh ins since then and I've lost 10.2 lbs putting me at 146. My ultimate goal is to get down to 130-135. I have not taken measurements but my jeans that I use to have to suck in to get them on, fit comfortably. I hope that they are too big by the time I need to start wearing them again. I want to go jean shopping this fall! If the summer wasn't already half over, I'd go shorts shopping. My shorts that I bought at the beginning of the summer use to fit perfectly. Now I need a belt.

I now have the eating right down and it's working. The next thing is I need to make exercise a habit. This will be the difficult part; finding the time, forgetting the excuses and finding something I love. I will update again.

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Raising Chickens and Better Health

We would love to have a few backyard hens. At first, it started with Sean falling in love with some petting zoo chickens back in 2009. Back then they were just some pets we wanted. After finding out that the city wouldn't allow us to have them, we just pushed the idea aside.

Here's my little cutie holding his first chicken. 

He even ended up being a chicken farmer that Halloween!

Fast forward to 2012. We got Netflix and I began watching food documentaries like Food, Inc. If you have not seen Food, Inc, you should. I knew our diet was not ideal, far from it. But I didn't really realize how bad the food industry really is. Something needs to change and it needs to start with our diet. And that's what we're slowly working on. I do mean slowly too. There's a lot we want to change and we'll never stick with it if we change it all at once. We're changing a few things at a time so the things we change become habit. A couple things that I changed before that are now habit is my water intake, no more white bread and breakfast. I'm actually cooking breakfast now. It's an odd morning now when I'm not scrambling eggs and grabbing a banana and some yogurt.

So that was before Food, Inc. Eek! Those poor animals! Poor us because that's what we're eating! I vowed to change that. First thing, eggs. Now that we eating so much more of them, what are we going to do? Us wanting chickens came back but of course the laws are still the same. However, I found some like minded people and we're petitioning the city....more on that in a minute. In the mean time, I found a local chicken owner and we now get our eggs straight from the source. They're not only healthier but tastier too! There's still one more problem: meat. I'll be honest. I love meat, especially pig. I can not be a vegetarian. The next best thing would be get meat straight from the source too. Whoa, have you seen how expensive that can be!? We're on a tight budget so this creates a problem but I proposed a solution to hubby. He wasn't too happy at first but he hasn't seen Food, Inc yet! My solution was if we cut back on the meat we do eat, we can afford the fresh meat. That's where the whole creating a habit comes in. We need to make eating meatless meals a habit. We're starting with 1 meatless day a week and will work up from there.

Now back to chickens. Before I found out about the petition, we signed up for the Rent-a-Chick program. We got to raise 5 adorable little chicks for a couple of weeks. I dreaded the day we had to return them to the farm. I so badly want hens of our own. Why? We have an affordable fresh egg source. Why worry about having them ourselves? Eggs are just a small part of the benefits of having a few hens. As I mentioned, they make fun pets. But there are more reasons. They eat pests like mosquitoes, ticks, and termites; less pesticides! They also eat kitchen scrapes; less city waste! Talking about waste, their waste would make wonderful fertilizer for our garden! I can't think of a negative. Noise..well, I'm not too worried about that because we just want hens, not roosters! Currently, the only residential district that is allowed to have chickens has a minimum of 3 acres. 3 acres is a lot more land than you need for just a few chickens!

If you agree, would you mind signing and sharing our petition?

4 Chesapeake Hens

And last but not least, the beautiful little girls we raised:

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Fitness Goals

I almost put this on my new year's resolution list but it seems so cliche. I want to work on a healthier lifestyle: healthier eating and exercising. I'm not doing this to lose weight because I'm pretty happy with the numbers on the scale. What I'm not happy about is the fluff around my middle.

I'm nursing so I don't want to limit what I eat by "dieting". I just want to make better food choices and I'm off to a good start. I made some changes while pregnant like replacing soda with water and cutting back on coffee. Then immediately postpartum I craved a lot of healthy foods. I'm determined not to let these changes revert back to what I use to be. I'm not stopping there; I want to make my eating even healthier. What I'm working on now is healthier snacks. I'm doing good at the moment; my favorite snacks right now are yogurt, bananas, cucumbers, salads, dry cereal (kid size bowl of honey nut cheerios), hard boiled eggs and peanut butter crackers. I try to ignore the cookies and such that hubby insists on having in the house for snacks and avoid buying the things I know I will snack on before the healthy stuff (chocolate!!!). I do great during the day, not so much between dinner and bedtime.

Exercise is sadly pretty nonexistent. I've tried in the past to workout regularly (usually a new year's resolution). I start off really strong and slowly slack off. I'm not really sure what happens other than I just get lazy. I need to figure out how to prevent this from happening this time around. I'm going to make ab work outs and cardio part of my everyday routine. I need to just find the motivation and a way to keep the motivation. Last night on Facebook I asked, "Do you exercise regularly? How do you stay motivated?". I heard two things that I think could help me stay motivate: find a workout buddy and do something I enjoy. The first thing that comes to mind is dance. I love to dance! I took dance lessons from the age of 4 until I was 5 months pregnant with Sean...yes, I was the one tapping on the stage at recital with a preggo belly. :) Some sort of dance workout would probably be great for cardio. Now to find one (preferably cheap/free and can be done at home) and to find a workout buddy.

My Fitness/Motivation pin board

Just for fun, my first dance recital:

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